A nurse carefully unwound the rough woolen scarf and as she did so a mass of red hair fell across the pillow, hair that in spite of its matted disorder showed flashes of gleaming gold.

"We'll get her on the bed," a night nurse said to an assistant. "Put your arm under her knees. Don't jar the stretcher!"

Before the novice could obey another and a stronger arm was thrust forward.

"Stand back thar, some of you-uns," commanded a loud voice, "I'll holp move Sal myself."

In vain were protests from nurses and orderlies alike, the old mountaineer seemed bent on making good use of his one arm and with quick dexterity he helped to lift her on the bed.

"Now, whar's the doctor?" he demanded, standing with feet far apart and head thrown back.

The doctor was at the desk in the corridor, speaking to Miss Fletcher in an undertone:

"We only made a superficial examination down-stairs," he was saying, "but it is evidently a ruptured appendix. If she's living in a couple of hours I may be able to operate. But it's ten to one she dies on the table."

"Who are they, and where did they come from?" Miss Fletcher asked curiously.

"Their name is Hawkins, and they are from somewhere in the Kentucky mountains. Think of his starting with her in that condition! He can't read or write; it's the first time he has ever been in a city. I am afraid he's going to prove troublesome. You'd better get him out of there as soon as possible."

But anyone, however mighty in authority, who proposed to move Jeb Hawkins when he did not choose to be moved reckoned unknowingly. All tactics were exhausted from suggestion to positive command, and the rules of the hospital were quoted in vain.

In the remote regions where Jeb lived there were no laws to break. Every man's home was his stronghold, to be protected at the point of a pistol. He was one of the three million people of good Anglo-Saxon stock who had been stranded in the highlands when the Cumberland Mountains dammed the stream of humanity that swept westward through the level wilderness. Development had been arrested so long in Jeb and his ancestors that the outside world, its interests and its mode of living, was a matter of supreme and profound indifference. A sudden and unprecedented emergency had driven him to the "Settlements." His girl had 

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